User:Yngvadottir/Infoboxes

This is my personal position on infoboxes. I do not presume to speak for anyone else, partiucularly since Arbcom ruled that they must be discussed with reference to particular cases, rather than presuming that a general rule regarding them exists: "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article by site policies or guidelines. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article."

Infoboxes were developed for species (as taxoboxes). They work well there, because they provide a standardized location and format for graphic and tabular material—geographical range, endangered status, who bestowed the current name, cladistics—that would otherwise clutter up the prose, or that will often be wanted in summary form while the prose can explain at greater length (for example, on previous classifications and/or names, varying degrees of endangeredness within the range, and differing past range). Infoboxes are also useful in other classes of article where there is similarly chunky material, or material some readers may want in tabular form: the political jurisdiction(s) a settlement falls under, its classification as a city, a town, a community, or whatever, and the map with the pin in it; varying opening dates for films in different countries, credits for the script and cinematography, running time, and the actors billed on the poster; hull number and engine data for ships and in particular, the vessel's varying names and specifications as she went through different owners (some films cry out for chained infoboxes like those we have available for ships); many athletes, particularly those notable only for their sport and those involved in tabulated activities such as baseball, athletics, and the Olympic Games, or who played for a series of clubs or teams during their career; and extant schools, colleges and universities: motto, colors, sports team name, enrollment and staff statistics, principal/president's name, official crest.

However, the infobox is reductive. Its purpose is to provide a summary at a glance, so it tends to imply that its contents are the most significant facts. For a defunct school, this makes it less than useful: much of the information is no longer available (for example, there may be no enrollment records in non-primary sources, and in any case, what date would be encyclopedic?), so it would be a short infobox, and that implies the school is not notable. Similarly for a film for which much of the information cannot be found: I add infoboxes to film articles when I have enough information to make them a useful place to put it.

This becomes more important with a person whose career or notability does not neatly fit into a particular infobox. For example, an athlete who went on to an important career in broadcasting. Someone known as both a politician and a writer. Someone who won one Olympic medal but otherwise played a non-Olympic sport, or went on to be an actor or a designer of bridges .... Some people are in fact known as polymaths. The cause célèbre so far as I'm concerned is Richard Wagner, who utterly refused to be boxed in. It's an insult to many notable people to box them in by selection of one infobox for them. A long, breathless list after the term "known for" does not redress the impression that we seek to limit them by forcing them within the confines of the box; rather it suggests they are squeaking by on notability as a jack of all trades, master of none, or that we the editors of Wikipedia will be a bit annoyed if they develop further untidy areas of distinction in the future.

Summarizing in a box also inherently ignores nuance. The box implies that these are the facts. Hence we have endless conflict over the genre of particular musical works, let alone of the artist or band responsible for it. Or over whether and on what basis to include a person's religion.